Ok. Enough with the short entries. I can't be doing with them. Although the mackerel amused me for a couple of seconds.

Extremely stressed out. It's one exam after another, and we STILL don't have study leave. Some would argue that's a good thing...but NO! Not at all. I need to sleep for at least two solid weeks to get over this. I feel like I'm hanging somewhere near the centre of a whirlwind, and it's all happening around me. Right now, the uprooted houses are tearing past with a few trees and cars thrown in there, and 22 exam papers. I should be nervous beforehand, but never am, prefering to float through with a feeling a detachment. It's afterwards I feel bad, and when I get home from school.

My brother was gloating about having only two German papers left to do, and repeated squeakily over and over again..."Only two exams to go....only two...two....two...and you have thirteen...etc." In the end, I splashed a bit of water over his head, which was a wrong move. He tore into the kitchen with a determined glint in his little eyes, heading straight for the two litre bottle. Yes. You have guessed it. That was it. I mopped the floor. In tears, which wouldn't stop, although a bit of water really isn't the end of the world.

To top off everything, I have a cactus spike imbedded deep into my index finger, which has swollen to a very abnormal size, and I have to read half a book for my (third) English exam tomorrow.

I am just about surviving. On tea and Sonic Youth, and defrosted fish fingers.

On the way to bed with a glass of water in one hand and two paracetamol in the other, I splashed water over my toe. It reminded me lakes, and a holidays in Germany two years ago. Of standing on pebbles, the evening sun, of reading on wooden piers, breakfast in bed and wearing dresses for once. Walking up the stairs, my brother caught me grinning like a fool, and glared at me, in that anti-social, hormonal way of his (I have a theory – sympathetic pre-menstrual syndrome).

I wish I could go back to that time. In retrospect, it was perfect, although it probably didn’t seem it at the time.